The University of Rhode Island has invested resources in facility and building upgrades, adding to their faculty and adding new majors, which may help explain the recent increase in prospective students.
“From an application perspective, URI continues to experience tremendous interest, which is great,” said Dean Libutti, vice provost of enrollment. “We have over 2,500 applications and we’re continuing still to get some in as we finalize our fall 2019 application pool.”
According to Libutti, there are trends that Enrollment Services is seeing in terms of perspective students’ interest in certain majors. Some majors that have seen an increase in interest include nursing, education, marine biology, psychology and criminology and criminal justice.
The Office of the Provost reported institutional research showing the following as the most popular majors by enrolled undergraduate students: nursing, psychology, pharmacy, communicative disorders, communication studies, biology, undecided, computer science, mechanical engineering, health studies, nutrition, business undeclared, animal science, technology, finance and human development and family studies.
In fall 2019, three new majors are debuting at URI. These majors are international studies and diplomacy, data science and innovation and entrepreneurship. Prospective students showed interest in all three majors.
“I’m pleased to see not only some of our existing majors being strong but it’s nice to see the interest being strong in our new programs,” Libutti said.
In Rhode Island, the number of high school graduates has been on the decline, which has been one of the biggest challenges for higher education in the state.
In the 2010-2011 academic year, the College Board reported that 11,743 students graduated high school in Rhode Island. This number was projected to decrease to 11,039 students graduating high school in Rhode Island for the 2018-2019 academic year.
Despite the expected decrease in Rhode Island graduates, Lubutti said that there was a slight rebound in the projected number of Rhode Island graduates, and URI saw a 4 percent increase in Rhode Island resident applications from last year.
“It’s nice to see that correlated with the growth we have seen in Rhode Island applications,” Libutti said.
While the number of high school graduates are declining, Libutti said that URI is excited with the partnerships they have with the community college. This partnership helps brings in transfer students as well as adults who return to URI to complete their degree.
Additionally, one in five of URI’s graduates every year are students that transferred to the school; the University accepts over 500 in-state transfers every year.
Lubutti said that URI has seen an increase in both in-state and out-of-state applications. Although the population of Rhode Island has decreased over the years and the number high school graduates have declined, the amount of out-of-state applicants has made up for the difference.
“The University of Rhode Island and our value proposition reputation, not just in New England and beyond, continues to grow, so it’s exciting to see that strong interest outside of Rhode Island as well,” Libutti said.
According to the Rhode Island Board of Education’s Official Enrollment for the 2018-2019 academic year, the total number of enrolled undergraduate students at URI was 14,770 for the fall 2018 semester. There were also 3,018 graduate students enrolled, making up a total enrollment of 17,788 students.
Out of the 17,788 total students, 9,590 students were in-state, making up 53.9 percent of total students, and 8,198 students were out-of-state, making up 46.1 percent of students.
“What’s exciting about the University of Rhode Island is that a lot of our out-of-state students enjoy Rhode Island and enjoy staying in the state and beginning their families and place of work, so when URI is where students want to come as a destination, it is oftentimes a place students would like to stay as well,” Libutti said.